Audio conferencing has grown in popularity. One problem commonly encountered in audio conferencing is the transmission of echoes to a far-end (remote) conference participant as the result of reverberation that occurs in a near-end (local) conferencing environment (e.g., reverberation of sound off the walls in a conference room can produce an echo heard by conference participants).
Prior art approaches to echo detection and cancellation commonly focus on comparing an input audio signal with an audio signal detected by a microphone in the conferencing environment. These approaches, however, often falter when the audio signal detected by a microphone is not exactly the same as the input signal. This can happen, for example, when the audio signal sent to a speaker in the conference environment is compressed in a manner that alters the signal. Compression techniques that alter the audio signal are commonly used, for example, in wireless audio conferencing systems to reduce the size of the signal transmitted over the air.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for acoustic echo cancellation suited for use with wireless microphones and speakers, particularly where the audio signals are compressed for wireless transmission.